Salvador Allende

Speech to the United Nations(excerpts)

4 December 1972

I come from Chile, a small country but one where today any citizen
is free to express himself as he so desires. A country of unlimited
cultural, religious and ideological tolerance and where there is no
room for racial discrimination. A country with its working class
united in a single trade union organization, where universal and
secret sufrage is the vehicle of determination of a multiparty
regime, with a Parliament that has been operating constantly since it
was created 160 years ago; where the courts of justice are
independent of the executive and where the constitution has only been
changed once since 1833, and has almost always been in effect. A
country where public life is organized in civilian institutions and
where the armed forces are of a proven professional background and
deep democratic spirit. A country with a population of almost
10,000,000 people that in one generation has had two first-place
Nobel Prize winners in literature, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda,
both children of simple workers. In my country, history, land and man
are united in a great national feeling.

But Chile is also a country whose retarded economy has been
subjected and even alienated to foreign capitalists firms, resulting
in a foreign debt of more than US$ 4,000 million whose yearly
services represent more than 30 per cent of the value of the
country's exports; whose economy is extremely sensitive to the
external situation, suffering from chronic stagnation and inflation;
and where millions of people have been forced to live amidst
conditions of exploitation and misery, of open or concealed
unemployment.

Today I have come because my country is confronting problems of
universal significance that are the object of the permanent attention
of this assembly of nations: the struggle for social liberation, the
effort for well-being and intellectual progress and the defence of
national identity and dignity.

The outlook which faced my country, just like many other countries
of the Third World, was a model of reflex modernization, which, as
technical studies and the most tragic realities demonstrate, excludes
from the possibilities of progress, well being and social liberation
more and more millions of people, destining them to a subhuman life.
It is a model that will produce a greater shortage of housing, that
will condemn an ever-greater number of citizens to unemployment,
illiteracy, ignorance and physiological misery.

In short, the same perspective that has kept us in a relationship
of colonization or dependency and exploitation in times of cold war,
has also operated in times of military conflict or in times of peace.
There is an attempt to condemn us, the underdeveloped countries, to
being second-class realities, always subordinated.

This is the model that the Chilean working class, coming on the
scene as protagonist of its own destiny, has decided to reject,
searching in turn for a speedy, autonomous development of its own,
and transforming the traditional structures in a revolutionary
manner.

The people of Chile have won the Government after a long road of
generous sacrifices, and it is fully involved in the task of
installing economic democracy so that productive activity will
operate in response to needs and social expectations and not in the
interests of individual profit. In a programmed and coherent manner,
the old structure, based on the exploitation of the workers and the
domination of the main means of production by a minority, is being
overcome. It is being replaced by a new structure -led by the workers
and placed at the service of the interests of the majority- which is
laying the foundations for a growth that will represent real
development, that will include all the population and not cast aside
vast sectors of the people and doom them to poverty and to being
social outcasts. The workers are driving the privileged sectors from
political and economic power, both in the centres of labour as well
as in the communes and in the state. This is the revolutionary
content of the process my country is going through for overcoming the
capitalist system and opening the way for a socialist one.

The need to place all our economic resources at the service of the
enormous needs of the people went hand in hand with Chile's regaining
of its dignity. We had to end the situation as a result of which we
Chileans, plagued by poverty and stagnation, had to export huge sums
of capital for the benefit of the world's most powerful market
economy. The nationalization of basic resources constitutes an
historic demand. Our economy could no longer tolerate the
subordination implied by having more than 80 per cent of its exports
in the hands of a small group of large foreign companies that have
always put their interests before those of the countries in which
they make profits. Neither could we accept the curse of the
latifundium, the industrial and trade monopolies, credit for just a
few and brutal inequality in the distribution of income.

THE REVOLUTIONARY PATH THAT CHILE IS FOLLOWING

The change in the power structure that we are carrying out, the
progressive leadership role of the workers in it, the national
recovery of basic riches, the liberation of our country from
subordination to foreign powers, are all crowning points of a long
historical process; of efforts to impose political and social
freedoms, of heroic struggle of several generations of workers and
farmers to organize themselves as a social force to obtain political
power and drive the capitalists from economic power.

Its tradition, personality and revolutionary awareness make it
possible for the Chilean people to give a boost to the process
towards socialism, strengthening civic liberties, collective and
individual, and respecting cultural and ideological pluralism. Ours
is a permanent battle to install social freedoms and economic
democracy through full exercise of political freedoms.

The democratic will of our people has taken upon itself the
challenge of giving a boost to the revolutionary process in the
framework of a highly institutionalized state of law, that has been
flexible to changes and is today faced by the need to adjust to the
new socio- economic reality.

We have nationalized basic riches, we have nationalized copper, we
have done so by a unanimous decision of Parliament, where the
government parties are in a minority. We want everyone to clearly
understand that we have not confiscated the large foreign copper
mining firms. In keeping with constitutional provisions, we have
righted a historic injustice by deducting from the compensation all
profits above 12 per cent a year that they had made since 1955.

Some of the nationalized firms had made such huge profits in the
last 15 years that when 12 per cent a year was applied as the limit
of reasonable profits, they were affected by important deductions.
Such is the case, for example, of a branch of the Anaconda Company,
which made profits in Chile of 21.5 per cent a year over its book
value between 1955 and 1970, while Anaconda's profits in other
countries were only 3.6 per cent a year. That is the situation of a
branch of the Kennecott Copper Corporation, which in the same period
of time, made an average of 52.8 per cent profits a year in Chile
-and in some years it made really incredible profits like 106 per
cent in 1967, 113 per cent in 1968 and more than 205 per cent in
1969. In the same period of time, Kennecott was making less than 10
per cent a year in profits in other countries. However, the
application of the constitutional norm has kept other copper firms
from suffering deductions because their profits did not exceed the
reasonable limit of 12 per cent a year.

We should point out that in the years just before the
nationalization, the large copper firms had started expansion plans,
which have failed in large measure and to which they did not
contribute their own resources, in spite of the huge profits they
made, and which they financed through foreign credits. In keeping
with legal ruling, the Chilean state must take charge of these debts
that reach the enormous figure of more than US$ 727 million. We have
even started to pay debts that one of those firms had with Kennecott,
its parent company in the United States.

These same firms that exploited Chilean copper for many years made
more than US$ 4,000 million in profits in the last 42 years alone,
while their initial investments were less than US$ 30 million. A
simple and painful example, an acute contrast: in my country there
are 600,000 children who can never enjoy life in normally human
terms, because in the first eight months of their existence they did
not receive the elementary amount of proteins. My country, Chile,
would have been totally transformed by these US$ 4,000 million. Only
a small part of this amount would assure proteins for all the
children in my country once and for all.

The nationalization of copper has been carried out while strictly
observing internal judicial order and with respect for the norms of
international law, which there is no reason to identify with the
interests of the big capitalist firms.

In short, this is the process my country is going through, and I
feel it is useful to present it to this assembly, with the authority
given to us by the fact that we are strictly fulfilling the
recommendations of the United Nations and relying on internal efforts
as the base for economic and social development. Here, in this forum,
the change of institutions and backward structures has been advised,
along with the redistribution of income, priority for education and
health and care for the poorest sectors. All this is a essential part
of our policy and it is in the process of being carried out.

THE FINANCIAL BLOCKADE

That is why it is even more painful to have to come here to this
rostrum to proclaim the fact that my country is the victim of grave
aggression.

We had foreseen problems and foreign resistance to our carrying
out our process of changes, especially in view of our nationalization
of natural resources. Imperialism and its cruelty have a long and
ominous history in Latin America and the dramatic and heroic
experience of Cuba is still fresh. The same is the case with Peru,
which has had to suffer the consequences of its decision to exercise
sovereign control over its oil.

In the decade of the 70s, after so many agreements and resolutions
of the international community, in which the sovereign right of every
state to control its natural resources for the benefit of its people
is recognized, after the adoption of international agreements on
economic, social and cultural rights and the strategy of the second
decade of development, which formalized those agreements, we are the
victims of a new expression of imperialism -more subtle, more sneaky,
and terribly effective- to block the exercise of our rights as a
sovereign state.

From the very moment of our election victory on 4 September 1970,
we were affected by the development oflarge-scale foreign pressures,
aimed at blocking the inauguration of a government freely elected by
the people and then overthrowing it. There have been efforts to
isolate us from the world, strangle the economy and paralyze the sale
of copper, our main export product, and keep us from access to
sources of international financing.

We realize that when we denounce the financial-economic blockade
with which we were attacked, it is hard for international public
opinion and even for many of our compatriots to easily understand the
situation because it is not open aggression, publicly proclaimed
before the whole world. Quite the contrary, it is a sneaky and
double-crossing attack, which is just as damaging to Chile.

We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows,
without a flag, with powerful weapons that are placed in a wide range
of influential positions.

We are not the object of any trade ban. Nobody has said that he
seeks a confrontation with our country. It would seem that our only
enemies or opponents are the logical internal political ones. That is
not the case. We are the victims of almost invisible actions, usually
concealed with remarks and statements that pay lip service to respect
for the sovereignty and dignity of our country. But we have
first-hand knowledge of the great difference that there is between
those statements and the specific actions we must endure.

I am not mentioning vague matters, I am discussing concrete
problems that affect my people today and which will have even more
serious economic repercussions in the coming months.

Chile, like most of the nations of the Third World, is very
vulnerable to the situation of the external sector of its economy. In
the last 12 months, the decline in the international price of copper
has represented a loss of about US$ 200 million in income for a
nation whose exports total a bit more than US$ 1,000 million, while
the products, both industrial and agricultural, that we must import
are much more expensive now, in some cases as much as 60 per cent.

As is almost always the case, Chile buys at high prices and sells
at low prices.

It has been at these moments, in themselves difficult for our
balance of payments, that we have had to face, among others, the
following simultaneous actions, apparently designed to take revenge
on the Chilean people for their decision to nationalize copper.

Until the moment my Government took office, every year Chile
received almost US$ 80 million in loans from international financial
organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank. This financing has been violently interrupted.

In the past decade, Chile received loans from the Agency for
International Development of the Government of the United States
(AID) totalling US$ 50 million a year.

We are not asking for those loans to be reinstated. The United
States has the sovereign right to grant or not to grant foreign aid
to any country. All we want to point out is that the drastic
elimination of those credits has resulted in important restrictions
in our balance of payments.

Upon taken office as President, my country had short-term credit
lines from private US banks, destined to finance our foreign trade,
that amounted to US$ 220 million. In a short period of time those
credits were suspended and about US$ 190 million have been deducted,
a sum we had to pay, since the respective operations were not
renewed.

Just like most of the nations of Latin America, because of
technological reasons and other factors, Chilemust make important
purchases of capital goods in the United States. Now, both the
financing of the supplies and that normally provided by the Eximbank
for this type of operation has also been suspended for us, putting us
in the irregular position of having to purchase goods of that kind by
paying in advance. This puts extraordinary pressure on our balance of
payments.

Payments of loans contracted by Chile with agencies of the public
sector of the United States before my Government took office, and
which were being carried out then, have also been suspended; so we
have to continue carrying out the corresponding projects making cash
in hand purchases on the US market, because, once the projects are in
full swing, it is impossible to replace the source of the respective
imports. That is why it had been decided that the financing should
come from US Government agencies.

As a result of the operations directed against the sale of copper
in the nations of Western Europe, our short-term operations with
private banks on that continent, mainly based on payment of that
metal, have been greatly blocked. This has resulted in more than US$
20 million in credit lines not being renewed, the suspension of
financial negotiations for more than US$ 200 million that were almost
complete, and the creation of a climate that blocks the normal
handling of our purchases in those countries and acutely distorts all
our activities in the field of external financing.

This financial stranglehold of a brutal nature, given the
characteristics of the Chilean economy, has resulted in a severe
limitations of our possibilities to purchase equipment, spare parts,
supplies, food and medicine. Every Chilean is suffering the
consequences of those measures, which bring suffering and grief into
the daily life of all and, naturally, make themselves felt in
internal political life.

What I have described means that the nature of the international
agencies has been distorted. Their utilization as instruments of the
bilateral policy of any of their member states, regardless of how
powerful it may be, is legally and morally unacceptable. It means
putting pressures on an economically weak country and punishing a
nation for its decision to regain control over its basic resources.
It is a premeditated form of intervention in the internal affairs of
a nation. This is what we call imperialist arrogance.

Distinguished representatives, you know this and you cannot forget
it. All this has been repeatedly condemned by resolutions of the
United Nations.

CHILE ATTACKED BY TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES

Not only do we suffer the financial blockade, we are also the
victims of clear aggression. Two firms that are part of the central
nucleus of the large transnational companies that sunk their claws
into my country, the International Telegraph and Telephone Company
and the Kennecott Copper Corporation, tried to run our political
life.

ITT, a huge corporation whose capital is greater than the budget
of several Latin American nations put together and greater than that
of some industrialized countries, began, from the very moment that
the people's movement was victorious in the elections of September
1970, a sinister action to keep me from taking office as President.

Between September and November of 1970, terrorist actions that
were planned outside of my country took place there, with the aid of
internal fascist groups. All this led to the murder of General Rene
Schneider Chereau, Commander in Chief of the Army, a just man and a
great soldier who symbolized the constitutionalism of the armed
forces of Chile.

In March of this year, the documents that denounced the
relationship between those sinister aims and the ITT were made
public. This company has admitted that in 1970 it even made
suggestions to the Government of the United States that it intervene
in political events in Chile. The documents are genuine, nobody has
dared deny them.

Last July the world learned with amazement of different aspects of
a new plan of action that ITT had presented to the US Government in
order to overthrow my Government in a period of six months. I have
with me the document, dated in October 1971, that contains the
18-point plan that was talked about. They wanted to strangle us
economically, carry out diplomatic sabotage, create panic among the
population and cause social disorder so that when the Government lost
control, the armed forces would be driven to eliminate the democratic
regime and impose a dictatorship.

While the ITT was working out this plan, its representatives went
through the motions of negotiating a formula for the Chilean state to
take over ITT's share in the Chilean telephone company. From the
first days of my administration, we had started talks to purchase the
telephone company that ITT controlled, for reasons of national
security.

On two occasions I received high officials of the firm. My
Government acted in good faith in the discussions. On the other hand,
ITT refused to accept payment at prices that had been set in keeping
with the verdict of international experts. It posed difficulties for
a rapid and fair solution, while clandestinely it was trying to
unleash chaos in my country.

ITT's refusal to accept a direct agreement and knowledge of its
sneaky manoeuvres has forced us to send to Congress a bill calling
for its nationalization.

The will of the Chilean people to defend the democratic regime and
the progress of its revolution, the loyalty of the armed forces to
their country and its laws have caused these sinister plots to fail.

Distinguished representatives, before the conscience of the World
I accuse ITT of trying to provoke a civil war in my country -the
supreme state of disintegration for a country. This is what we call
imperialist intervention.

Chile now faces a danger whose solution does not only depend on
national will, but on a whole series of external elements. I am
talking about the action of the Kennecott Copper Corporation.

Our constitution says that disputes caused by nationalizations
must be solved by a court that, just like all the others in my
country, is independent and sovereign in its decisions. Kennecott
Copper accepted its jurisdiction and for a year it appeared before
that tribunal. Its appeal was not accepted, and it decided to use its
considerable power to deprive us of the benefits of our copper
exports and put pressure on the Government of Chile. In September, it
went so far in its arrogance as to demand the embargo of the payment
of these exports in courts in France, Holland and Sweden. It will
surely try the same thing in other countries. The basis for this
action cannot be more unacceptable from the judicial and moral points
of view.

Kennecott would have the courts of other nations, that have
absolutely nothing to do with the problems or the negotiations
between the Chilean state and the Kennecott Copper Corporation,
decide that a sovereign act of our Government -carried out in
response to a mandate of the highest authority, like that of the
political constitution, and supported by all the Chilean people - is
null and void. This attempt of theirs is in contradiction to basic
principles of international law by virtue of which the natural
resources of a country, especially those which constitute its
livelihood, belong to the nation and it can dispose of them at will.
There is no universally accepted international law or, in this case,
specific treaty, which provides for that. The world community,
organized under the principles of the United Nations, does not accept
an interpretation of international law, subordinated to the interests
of capitalism, that will lead the courts of any foreign country to
back up a structure of economic relations at the service of the
above-mentioned economic system. If that were the case, there would
be a violation of a fundamental principle of international life: that
of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a state, as was
explicitly recognized at the third UNCTAD.

We are guided by international law repeatedly accepted by the
United Nations, especially in resolution 1803 (XVIII) of the General
Assembly; norms that have just been reinforced by the trade and
development board, based itself on the charges my country made
against Kennecott. The respective resolution reaffirmed the sovereign
right of all states to freely dispose of their natural resources, and
declared in application of this principle, that the nationalization
carried out by states to regain control over those resources are an
expression of their sovereign powers. Every state must set the
standards for those measures and the disputes that may arise as a
result are the exclusive concern of its courts, without prejudice to
resolution 1803 of the General Assembly. This resolution allows the
intervention of extra-national jurisdictions under exceptional
conditions and as long as there is an agreement between sovereign
states and other interested parties.

This is the only acceptable thesis of the United Nations. It is
the only one that is in keeping with its philosophy and principles.
It is the only one that can protect the rights of the weak against
the abuses of the strong.

Since it could not be any other way, in the courts of Paris we
have obtained the lifting of the embargo that had been in effect on
the payment of a shipment of our copper. We will continue to
ceaselessly defend the exclusive jurisdiction of Chilean courts over
any dispute resulting from the nationalization of our basic resource.

For Chile, this is not only an important matter of judicial
interpretation. It is a problem of sovereignty and, even more, of
survival.

Kennecott's aggression inflicts grave damage on our economy. Just
the direct difficulties imposed on the marketing of copper have
resulted in the loss of many millions of dollars for Chile in the
last two months alone. But that isn't all. I have already discussed
the effects linked to the blocking of my country's financial
operations with the banks of Western Europe. There is also an evident
effort to create a climate of distrust among the buyers of our main
export product, but this will fail.

The objectives of this imperialist firm are now going even further
than that, because in the long run it cannot expect any political or
legal power to deprive Chile of what rightfully belongs to her. It
wants to bring us to our knees, but this will never happen.

The aggression of the big capitalist firms seeks to block the
emancipation of the people. It represents a direct attack on the
economic interests of the workers in the concrete case against Chile.

The Chilean people are a people that have reached the political
maturity to decide by a majority the replacement of the capitalist
economic system by a socialist one. Our political regime has
institutions that have been open enough to channel that revolutionary
will without violent clashes. It is my duty to warn this assembly
that the reprisals and the blockade, aimed at producing
contradictions and the resultant economic distortions, threaten to
have repercussions on peace and internal coexistence in my country.
They will not attain their evil objectives. The great majority of
Chileans will find the way to resist them in a patriotic and
dignified manner. What I said at the beginning will always be valid:
our history, land and man are joined in a great national feeling.

THE PHENOMENON OF THE TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

At the third UNCTAD I was able to discuss the phenomenon of the
transnational corporations. I mentioned the great growth in their
economic power, political influence and corrupting action. That is
the reason for the alarm with which world opinion should react in the
face of a reality of this kind. The power of these corporations is so
great that it goes beyond all borders. The foreign investments of US
companies alone reached US$ 32,000 million. Between 1950 and 1970
they grew at a rate of 10 per cent a year, while that nation's
exports only increased by 5 per cent. They make huge profits and
drain off tremendous resources from the developing countries.

In just one year, these firms withdrew profits from the Third
World that represented net transfers in their favour of US$ 1,743
million: US$ 1,013 million from Latin America; US$ 280 million from
Africa; US$ 376 million from the Far East; and US$ 74 million from
the Middle East. Their influence and their radius of action are
upsetting the traditional trade practices of technological transfer
among states, the transmission of resources among nations and labour
relations.

We are faced by a direct confrontation between the large
transnational corporations and the states. The corporations are
interfering in the fundamental political, economic and military
decisions of the states. The corporations are global organizations
that do not depend on any state and whose activities are not
controlled by, nor are they accountable to any parliament or any
other institution representative of the collective interest. In
short, all the world political structure is being undermined. The
dealer's don't have a country. The place where they may be does not
constitute any kind of link; the only thing they are interested in is
where they make profits. This is not something I say; they are
Jefferson's words.

The large transnational firms are prejudicial to the genuine
interests of the developing countries and their dominating and
uncontrolled action is also carried out in the industrialized
countries, where they are based. This has recently been denounced in
Europe and in the United States and resulted in a US Senate
investigation. The developed nations are just as threatened by this
danger as the underdeveloped ones. It is a phenomenon that has
already given rise to the growing mobilization of organized workers
including the large trade union organizations that exist in the
world. Once again the action of the international solidarity of
workers must face a common enemy: imperialism.

In the main, it was those acts that led the Economic and Social
Council of the United Nations -following the denunciation madeby
Chile- to unanimously approve, last July, a resolution that called
for a group of world figures to meet and study the effects and
function of transnational corporations in the process of development,
especially in the developing countries, and their repercussions on
international relations, and present recommendations for appropriate
international action.

Ours is not an isolated or a unique problem. It is the local
expression of a reality that overwhelms us, a reality that covers
Latin America and the Third World. In varying degrees of intensity,
with unique features, all the peripheral countries are threatened by
something similar.

The spokesman for the African group at the Trade and Development
Board a few weeks ago announced the position of those countries
towards the denunciation made by Chile of Kennecott's aggresion,
reporting that his group fully supported Chile, because it was a
problem which did not affect only one nation but, potentially, all of
the developing world. These words have great value, because they
represent the recognition of an entire continent that through the
Chilean case, a new stage in the battle between imperialism and the
weak countries of the Third World is being waged.

THE COUNTRIES OF THE THIRD WORLD

The battle in defence of natural resources is but a part of the
battle being waged by the countries of the Third World against
underdevelopment. There is a very clear dialectical relationship:
imperialism exists because underdevelopment exists; underdevelopment
exists because imperialism exists. The aggression we are being made
the object of today makes the fulfilment of the promises made in the
last few years as to a new large- scope action aimed at overcoming
the conditions of underdevelopment and want in the nations of Africa,
Asia and Latin America appear illusory. Two years ago, on the
occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the United
Nations, the UN General Assembly solemnly proclaimed the strategy for
a second decade of development. In keeping with this strategy, all UN
member states pledged to spare no efforts to transform, via concrete
measures, the present unfair international division of labour and to
close the vast economic and technological gap that separates the
wealthy countries from the developing ones.

We have seen that none of those aims ever became a reality. On the
contrary, the situation has worsened.

Thus, the markets of the industrialized countries have remained as
tightly closed as they ever were to the basic products - chiefly the
agricultural products - of the developing countries and the index of
protectionist measures is on the increase. The terms of exchange
continue to deteriorate, the system of generalized preferences for
the exportation of our manufactured and semi-manufactured goods has
never been put into effect by the nation whose market - considering
its volume- offered the best perspectives and there are no
indications that this will be done in the immediate future.

The transfer of public financial resources, rather than reaching
0.7 per cent of the gross national product of the developed nations,
has dropped from 0.34 to 0.24 per cent. The debt contracted by the
developing countries, which was already enormous by the beginning of
this year, has skyrocketed to between $70 and $75 thousand million in
only a few months. The sums for loan services paid by those
countries, which represent an intolerable drain for them, have been
to a great measure the result of the conditions and terms of the
loans. In 1970 these services increased 18 per cent, and in 1971, 20
per cent -more than twice the mean rate for the 1960 decade.

This is the drama of underdevelopment and of the countries which
have not stood up for their rights, which have not demanded respect
for their rights and defended, through a vigorous collective action,
the price of their raw materials and basic products and have not
confronted the threats and aggressions by neo-imperialism.

We are potentially wealthy countries and yet we live a life of
poverty. We go here and there, begging for credits and aid and yet we
are - a paradox typical of the capitalist economic system - great
exporters of capital.

LATIN AMERICA AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Latin America, as part of the developing world, forms part of the
picture I have just described. Together with Asia, Africa and the
socialist countries, she has waged many battles in the last few years
to change the structure of the economic and commercial relations with
the capitalist world, to replace the unfair and discriminatory
economic and monetary order created in Bretton Woods at the end of
World War II.

It is true that there are differences in the national income of
many of the countries in our region and that of the countries on
other continents, and even among countries that could be considered
as relatively less developed among the underdeveloped countries.

However, such differences - which many mitigate by comparing them
with the national product of the industrialized world - do not keep
Latin America out of the vast neglected and exploited sector of
humanity. The consensus at Vina del Mar, in 1969, affirmed these
coincidences and defined, pointed out clearly and indicated the scope
of the region's economic and social backwardness and the external
factors that determined it, pointing out the great injustices that
are being committed against the region under the disguise of
cooperation and aid. I say this because large cities in Latin
America, admired by many, hide the drama of hundreds of thousands of
human beings living in marginal towns that are the product of
unemployment and sub-employment. These beautiful cities hide the deep
contrast between small groups of privileged individuals and the great
masses whose nutrition and health indexes are the lowest.

It is easy to see why our Latin American continent shows such a
high rate of infant mortality and illiteracy, with 13 million people
out of jobs and more than 50 million doing only occasional work. More
than 20 million Latin American do not use money even as a means of
exchange.

No regime, no government has been able to solve the great deficit
in housing, labour, food and health. On the contrary, the deficit
increases with every passing year in keeping with the population
increase. If this situation continues, what will happen when there
are more than 600 million of us by the end of the century?

The situation is even more dramatic in Asia and Africa, whose PER
CAPITA income is even lower and whose process of development shows an
even greater weakness.

It is not always noticed that the Latin American subcontinent -
whose wealth potential is simply enormous - has become the principal
field of action of economic imperialism for the last 30 years. Recent
data given by the International Monetary Fund shows that private
investment by the developed countries in Latin America shows a
deficit against Latin America of $9,000 million between 1960 and
1970. In a word, that amount represents a net contribution of capital
from our region to the wealthy world in one decade.

Chile is completely in solidarity with the rest of Latin America,
without exception. For this reason, it favours and fully respects the
policy of non-intervention and self-determination, which we apply on
a worldwide scale. We enthusiastically foster the increase of our
economic and cultural relations. We are in favour of the
complementing and the integration of our economies. Hence, we work
with enthusiasm within the framework of LAFTA and, as an initial
step, for the creation of the Andean countries' common market, which
unites us with Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.

Latin America has left the era of protest behind her. Needs and
statistics contributed to an increased awareness. Reality has
shattered all ideological barriers. All attempts at division and
isolation have been defeated and there is an ardent desire to
coordinate the offensive in defence of the interests of the countries
on the continent and the other developing countries.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent
revolution inevitable. These are not my words. I simply share the
same opinion. The words are those of John F. Kennedy.

CHILE IS NOT ALONE

Chile is not alone. All attempts to isolate her from the rest of
Latin America and the world have failed. On the contrary, Chile has
been the object of endless demonstrations of solidarity and support.
The ever- increasing condemnation of imperialism; the respect that
the efforts of the people of Chile deserve; and the response to our
policy of friendship with all the nations of the world, were all
instrumental in defeating the attempts to surround our country with a
ring of hostility.

In Latin America, all the plans for economic and cultural
cooperation or integration, plans of which we form part on both the
regional and subregional level, have continued to take on strength at
an accelerated pace. As a result, our trade - particularly with
Argentina, Mexico and the countries of the Andean Pact - has
increased considerably.

The joint support of the Latin American countries in world and
regional forums in favour of the principles of free determination
over natural resources has remained firm as a rock. And, in response
to the recent attacks against our sovereignty, we have been the
object of demonstrations of complete solidarity. To all of these
countries, we express our most deep-felt gratitude.

Socialist Cuba, which is suffering the rigours of blockade, has
always given us her revolutionary solidarity.

On the world scale, I must point out very especially that we have
enjoyed the full solidarity of the socialist countries in Europe and
Asia from the very beginning. The great majority of the world
community did us the honour of electing Santiago as the seat of the
third UNCTAD meeting and has welcomed with great interest our
invitation to be the site of the next world conference on rights to
the sea - an invitation which I reiterate on this occasion.

The non-aligned countries' foreign ministers meeting, held in
Georgetown, Guyana, in September, publicly expressed its determined
support in response to the aggression of which we are being made the
object by Kennecott Copper.

The CIPEC, an organization of coordination established by the main
copper- exporting countries - Peru, Zaire, Zambia and Chile - which
met recently in Santiago, at the ministers' level, at my suggestion,
to analyse the situation of aggression against my country created by
Kennecott Copper, has just adopted a number of resolutions and
recommendations of vast importance to the various states. These
resolutions and recomendations constitute an unreserved support of
our position and an important step taken by countries of the Third
World in defence of trade of their basic products.

The resolutions will no doubt constitute important material for
the second commission. But I would like to refer at this moment to
the categorical declaration to the effect that any action that may
impede or obstruct the exercise of a country's sovereign right to
dispose freely of its antural resources constitutes an economic
attack. Needless to say, the Kennecott actions against Chile
constitute an economic aggression and, therefore, the ministers
agreed on asking their respective governments to suspend all economic
and commercial relations with the firm and state that disputes on
compensation in case of nationalization are the exclusive concern of
those states which adopt such measures.

However, the most significant thing is that it was resolved 'to
establish a permanent mechanism of protection and solidarity' in
relation to copper. Mechanisms such as this one, together with the
OPEC, which operates in the field of petroleum, are the germ of what
would be an organization which would include all the countries of the
Third World to protect and defend all basic products - including the
mining, petroleum and agricultural fields.

The great majority of the countries in Western Europe, from the
Scandinavian countries in the extreme north to Spain in the extreme
south, have been cooperating with Chile, and their understanding has
meant a form of support to us. It is thanks to this understanding
that we have renegotiated our foreign debt.

And, lastly, we have been deeply moved by the solidarity of the
world's working class, expressed by its great trade union central
organizations and demonstrated in actions of great significance, such
as the port workers of Le Havre and Rotterdam's refusal to unload
copper from Chile whose payment has been arbitrarily and unfairly
embargoed.